


fickle kings of bedlam

by kay_cricketed



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Cannibalism, Dubcon Kissing, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, M/M, Mental Illness, Murder, Violence, i don't even know it's just all terrible sorry, mutiliation, season two spoilers, threats of non-con/rape
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-19
Updated: 2014-05-20
Packaged: 2018-01-25 16:47:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1655513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kay_cricketed/pseuds/kay_cricketed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane is about to initiate emergency lockdown procedures to contain an outbreak of its most dangerous, psychopathic felons. It's unfortunate, then, that Will Graham is trapped in the lower levels with his former psychiatrist. Sometimes we survive only by slaughtering our nightmares before they slaughter us.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Under the Porch, He Eats

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally a response to a [request](http://hannibalkink.dreamwidth.org/1847.html?thread=2757687) in the Hannibal kink meme for Hannibal "protecting" Will during a breakout in the hospital. After the finale, I dropped it for a while, but I picked it up again with the advent of season two and am close to finishing at last. For this reason, some things are not compliant with season two. I adjusted and rewrote components to make it more compliant, but only up until Will's release. After that, it's on a road of its own.
> 
> A few warnings: I mark it as Hannibal/Will, but it is that relationship as the show portrays it. By this, I mean those Hannibal loves are just as unlucky as those he finds rude. It is largely one-sided, and Will is only just coming into awareness of how he can use it to survive. If you're looking for something else, sorry!
> 
> More important, I apologize beforehand for the portrayal of the inmates at the hospital as violent, murderous psychopaths (with a few exceptions). I worry because it's a gross misrepresentation of people who struggle with mental health issues, but want to reiterate that these inmates are in a hospital for the criminally insane because they are, in all likelihood, of Hannibal Lecter's ilk, and resemble the serial killers and fetishists we see on the show. Hell, some of them are in the show. Still, sorry, sorry, sorry.

**I.**

 

The eggs and sausage tasted even better than they smelled, the meat blackened from a skillet's kiss and crushed with fresh herbs. Although the hotel room's curtains admitted only a narrow band of light across the table, Will was certain he glimpsed the stark red of peppers somewhere on the plate, as well. There was something spicy and sweet on his tongue. If not peppers, then onion.

"Or we could socialize like adults," Hannibal Lecter said. "God forbid we become friendly."

Will picked at the peace offering with his fork, favoring the sausage. "I don't find you very interesting," he said. It was the truth, if not very sociable.

"You will," said Hannibal. It was such an equally unsociable response that Will lifted his chin and looked him in the eyes, picking up those minute details that were normally so distracting: the ironed folds of his expensive bespoke suit, a pair of graceless crow's feet, some sense of otherness that permeated the very air around him and drew in only shadows. His smile was good-humored, though, tempered with the humility of a man who understood his own defects and deemed them acceptable—much in the way he accepted Will's, perhaps, or that of his patients.

But Will knew without asking that Dr. Lecter would never cook for a patient. This interaction, without his input, had set in motion the boundaries that would define them, in directions Will hadn't expected.

He speared another chunk of sausage, and held his gaze.

"You know, Will," Hannibal said, "I think Uncle Jack sees you as a fragile little teacup. The finest china used for only special guests."

Will laughed. The morning workings inside him hadn't ground into play yet and the sound came out graveled, newborn. "How do you see me?" he asked, curious.

Hannibal considered him in the half-light.

"The mongoose I want under the house when the snakes slither by," he said, as if he saw the grime-infested hotel room for the warm, murky den it was, as if he saw Will's fear and recognized its teeth.

 

**II.**

 

The walk down the corridor to Hannibal Lecter’s glass-faced cell is a verifiable gauntlet. The worst of Dr. Chilton’s patients are housed here, deep in the underbelly of the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane where the dark can hide them. Their cells line the way to Hannibal like a slideshow detailing the evolution of a madman. The air smells like urine and spoil— _this is my design_ , Will thinks, _that your keen senses cripple under the weight of this disgusting hell hole, and it will still be less than you deserve_ —and the patients clatter against their bars, hooting and howling at Will when he passes. They say he has pretty eyes. They say his curls are shaped for their fingers.

They say he’s Hannibal’s hound, and they bark at him.

It's only made worse by Will's past incarceration. He remembers his time locked in here, when it was less dirty, less festering, but nevertheless stale with the promise of corrosion. Most of the prisoners who taunted him then are nothing more than sharp, persistent memory, transferred to other prisons, thinned through suicide. But like a collective hive mind, these new murderers and rapists know Will Graham by his face—they reach for him through the bars and bray at his heels.

Did the mutt that escaped its pen come home? they ask. Did it miss its collar? Did it get _cold_ at night, Graham?

Will pushes them out of his head. It’s not easy. His empathy grapples for some stability at their hisses, trying to worm in between their ears and turn them inside out: the hard twist-tie of Peterson’s heart when he strangled his first little girl in green ribbons, the way Kelts watches the small of Will’s back and imagines filleting him like a fish, all those men whose secret thoughts are uglier than their worst killings. The most twisted are kept here, but Will can reach them. He can get into their heads in a way Dr. Chilton only dreams about, puce in envy. He can understand them, if he wants to.

He doesn’t. Will has stopped wanting to understand people, ever since Hannibal carved into Will’s belly with a linoleum knife and confessed how he coveted his heart. The scar where Hannibal tried to eviscerate him hasn’t lost its inflamed blush. The pain is frequent. Often, Will finds himself pressing his fingertips to his chest, searching out the thready heartbeat simply to prove it hasn’t been taken after all. He is not always convinced by its noise.

Coming here seems to drown out his pulse entirely. However, although the gauntlet is daunting, Will makes the journey down the corridor every month. He is drawn like clockwork. Some suffocating haunt visits him in the night and he finds he has already scheduled the visit come morning, a note pinned to the refrigerator in his messy chicken-scratch scrawl reminding Will that he is not—and never will be again—in control of himself.

Someday, he tells himself, any day now, he will go home to Louisiana. He will fix boat motors and drag nets from the bayou and dream only of the gulf creeping up on the land. This is his design, the only design he has left. But Will never quite makes that phone call.

Not yet. Not today.

He doesn’t know what Hannibal thinks about these visits. He imagines that Hannibal is amused. Perhaps sadistic in his satisfaction that Will Graham is firmly under thumb, cell or no cell. For all that he spent months in the design of the Chesapeake Ripper, Will feels he does not understand Hannibal Lecter at all. The Ripper, yes, as if they’d harvested the organs and devoured them together, savoring the flavor under their tongues, knighting each other with femurs still hot from the oven—but not the man, not the _friend_ who betrayed him. Will can’t unravel a puzzle made out of needles. It bleeds to touch. The easiest explanation, the one that he imprints in his molars, is that the friend never existed at all.

The stag, too, remains, much like Garrett Jacob Hobbs, an infection of his nightmares that lurks amongst the trees and in hollows where people don’t dare to breathe. It follows close over his shoulder, a stray, some feral-scented thing he can’t shake. Where once it heralded death, now at least it comes silent and remains so. It watches Will fish. It eats clovers after the thaw.

Hannibal’s cell is a terrifying oasis in the midst of the madness. The florescent lights are brighter in Hannibal’s cell; they cast furrows into his pale face. But it is quieter, somehow, and under Hannibal’s focus the other patients fade into a distant cacophony.

Today, Hannibal is sketching at his desk.

“What are you drawing?” Will asks, sinking down onto the metal fold-up chair set in front of the barrier of glass. His stomach protests the movement. He breathes out, long and slow. It’s not a safe question. There aren’t any safe questions. But to ask the first question is to have some kind of power.

Will takes whatever power he can get, these visits.

Hannibal looks up at him. He smiles, then turns the piece of paper and displays it. There is lead smeared across his thumb, a gray shine. “The market at San Marco in Firenze," he says. "They sold a distinguishable lampredotto there every Wednesday, by cart. It’s not often I make purchases from street vendors, but for many the family business is in lampredotto, and so I bow to the experts.”

Will studies the drawing. He can see the rounded dome of San Marco rising above the market stalls, and can feel the muggy summer heat pressing in from all sides. He adjusts his collar and does not speak.

The walls of Hannibal’s cell are covered in drawings, most of them landscapes and replicas of obscure expressions of beauty. It doesn’t look like the cell of a psychopath, but neither had Hannibal’s study. The toilet in the corner is an affront to the otherwise pristine, genteel décor Hannibal has copiously upheld even in imprisonment. Will recognizes his paper as thick, handmade, expensive. Dr. Chilton still believes he can buy Hannibal's cooperation with favors.

"I can see it doesn't interest you," Hannibal says. He puts his work aside and tilts his chin up. It is a subtle display of supremacy. This, Will can now see. Once, it meant something so different to him—a sign of regard.

Will tightens his grip on his knees at the reminder. His stomach roils, an acidic taste flushing through his mouth. _Don’t be sick_ , he thinks. _Don’t flinch. He’ll use your fear against you. He always has._

“How are you, Will?” Hannibal asks. He replaces his pencils in their case, one by one. “How are your dreams?”

“Better. Peaceful."

“You’re lying,” observes Hannibal. "A fact for which I'm sorry."

They’re silent a while, and Will gazes at him in what’s become a painfully familiar cocktail of emotions. They are bitter, like rind, torn through too many gutters to identify. He only knows that he burns.

Hannibal rearranges his desk in this time. He says, eventually, “If I were still your psychiatrist, I would advise you to cease these visits. The closure you’re seeking is an illusion, a child’s safety blanket. This is something you must live with, but you feel you can’t stomach that living. Jack never understood what he was doing when he put you in front of Garrett Jacob Hobbs. You were never going to be able to distance. Now you are as trapped as I am, behind bars no one else may recognize.”

“You mean when he put me in front of you,” says Will.

“I do.” Hannibal meets his eyes. “Are you going to ask if I feel regret for what I’ve done?” He leans in, steepled fingers touching his mouth. “It was one of Dr. Chilton’s first questions for me.”

Will pulls in air and holds it back behind his barriers. He says nothing.

“What if I told you that I do regret something?” Hannibal asks. “The necessity of killing you."

And there it is—that stretching burn, some impression of antlers obscuring the moon—the sincerity a peel of wallpaper, hiding the rot beneath. Will leans forward in his chair, bares his teeth, and says, “ _That is a lie_.”

In the silence, Hannibal is slow to smile.

It is a smile that could clamp bone.

The worst part, Will realizes, isn’t that the quiet-spoken, thoughtful man he’d respected so much has become a monster, but that he was a monster all along, that he hid a ferocity and deep-seated sadism that meant he could drive antlers into a still-living body and then meet Will for a glass of wine, feed Will the scraps of the very people he’d wanted to save, bait the lure and hook Will through the cheek. Fighting free of that prong has temporarily ruined Will's ability to smile.

“But I do regret, in a way,” says Hannibal. “It was never my intention to hurt you, Will, unless you became deserving. I sought to understand you and to give you the opportunities to understand me."

"You framed me for your murders," says Will.

"A mistake I did my best to rectify. Do my actions not speak for themselves?" Hannibal asks, the reason in his voice descending into a perfectly kept savagery. _This_ is Hannibal Lecter and he chooses his words like kitchen knives. "Didn’t I pick you up like one of your dogs on the street and make you my own? Didn’t I coax you into my house with food and kind words? You tried so hard to hide it, but for all your bravado, it was my door you came to, it was my reality you sought comfort in, and you would have _bitten_ for me.”

Bile surges high in his esophagus. He has to work to find words.

_I see you_ , he thinks in revulsion. _I see you, Dr. Lecter._

"If you need further proof, look no farther than your presence," says Hannibal, settling back in his chair. He adjusts his nondescript uniform as if it is the same quality of his past wardrobe, pinching the wrinkles out. "You have nothing to gain from these get-togethers, Will. I'm not so narcissistic to believe you miss our friendship. Neither can I ignore the evidence. I can only conclude some part of you is as lost as I am, that we are not yet two men, but a homogenized consciousness marred from forced separation."

"You're betraying your psychopathic tendencies, Dr. Lecter," Will says.

"Am I wrong? Are you not here for closure?" Hannibal smiles. "Or are we... merely having conversations?"

No—he’s out of the chair with a clatter—he can’t take this, he’s shaking. His whole body is shaking. He can’t breathe. Sometime in the last five minutes, Will had lost complete control of the situation and he hadn't even realized, so fixed on the predator that his flight and fight response dovetailed, and now a composed escape is impossible.

Shame curls up his throat and tastes sour, and Will knows he’s going to be sick. He’s going to fall apart right here in front of the only person who ever put hands on him to put him back together, but it’s _not safe_ , was never safe—

And then, the alarms begin to shriek.

They cut through his body quick, capturing Will’s attention, an unlikely godsend. He looks up. He can hear the hospital security for the cell block shouting to one another, then a clatter of footsteps going farther away. The alarms blare from somewhere up higher than this floor, which is in the foundations of the building, lowest of the low. But their shrill keen is unmistakable.

“It’s unfortunate you chose to visit me today,” says Hannibal.

“Unfortunate,” Will repeats. Sweat’s gathering like a cross down his back, dampening the cotton, and he wonders that he will ever be rid of this, if he can even remember what it was to be clean and safe and sun-dry. He looks at Hannibal.

“Yes. I always enjoy your company, Will. However, I’m afraid today is an example of poor luck and timing.” Hannibal stands, folding his hands before him. His face is placid again, the mask, or maybe the slate he wears when he’s asleep. His eyes are so dark. Even before, Will used to find comfort in not seeing so much white in his gaze, the unclutteredness of meeting his vision. He’d thought Hannibal was _honest_. “You see, I’ve been hearing whispers coming our way for some time now. Rumors, at first. But at this moment, I’m altogether certain one of the wards has planned a timed outbreak.”

“What?”

“An escape, one would imagine. Or a mass murder.”

The patients in the corridor catcall. They laugh and beat on the walls and the noises are messing with Will’s perception of the situation, clawing at his calm. He looks down the end of the hall. The guard is gone. In the station, he can see one of the orderlies bent over a computer screen, nearly out of sight.

“One or two patients making a break for it doesn't make a crisis,” says Will. "They've sounded those alarms for less. I know. I remember."

Hannibal puts on his shoes.

It’s that act, so simple but terrifying, which breaks some of Will’s resolve. He hears himself heave, his imagination curdling, the scent of the patients getting under his skin and becoming a whitewash and—

The lights go out.

Will’s heart skips a beat or four. He abandons the nearby chair to grope for the stone wall that ought to be behind him. The patients’ voices build to a crescendo, an animalistic _whoop_. The black is all-encompassing, a gaping yawn in which Will cannot even see his hands in front of his face.

“Will,” Hannibal is saying—his name. “Will, come to me.”

“The power,” he says to himself, “the power’s out.”

“Yes. It may be a simple power outage. More likely, the patients have taken control of operations and are shutting the systems down. If this is indeed the case, you must flee. Immediately, before the cells are unlocked. The bolts are sealed with a program, save for a few—including mine. They will be infiltrating that system next to spread confusion and disorder.”

“What? What do you mean, infiltrating the system? Is there anyone here _capable_ of that?”

He can't hear Hannibal's answer over the din, and grapples forward in search of it. It isn’t until Will feels the glass beneath his palm that he recognizes its danger.

He means to jerk back, but there is a thump against the barrier and suddenly Will _knows_ that Hannibal’s in front of him, right there, hand flattened against the other side of the wall exactly where Will’s remains. Despite the glass, Will can feel his heat bleeding through. How their fingers press together like twins. It is electric, base. The sensation digs tenterhooks into every one of Will’s synapses and makes it impossible for him to yank away, not without maiming things within himself. He breathes, and it trembles.

“Will, they will cut you open and violate your dying corpse.”

The patients scream in ecstasy.

“They will mutilate you,” says Hannibal. “Your face, your mouth.”

“Nothing new there,” he says.

He knows that Hannibal’s smiling at him. God help him, he does. If he wanted to, Will could reach up and map its every nuance, and then peel it off of his skin like a temporary tattoo.

“Go,” Hannibal says, tapping the glass.

“I don’t know _where_ to go,” Will protests. “If you’re right, I don’t know where—where is safe, they'll lock down the perimeter before—”

“Go back the way you came and take the lift, but when you reach the next floor, get off. There will be service stairs. Use them.” Hannibal’s voice is low and instructional, and under the veil of the pitch blackness, it is as though he’s giving Will a friendly piece of advice in his office again, the scent of leather and old books embracing them. “If the building hasn’t entered lockdown, take one of the emergency exits. Otherwise, you must hide until authorities arrive. Avoid Dr. Chilton’s study, the surgery, and the staff lounges. The patients will want to defile these temples first.”

He can’t trust him. Not after everything that’s happened, not with his life. At every step, Hannibal Lecter has done his utmost to leave fractures in his wake.

A loud buzz pierces the room. And with it, the sound of the cell doors unlocking, bolts sliding back into place. Fear clutches at every inch of Will like a second skeleton. Because it's true. It's _true_.

“They will ignore the hydrotherapy rooms,” says Hannibal, hard now, taut. “There’s nothing of use to them. Go there. Wait for me.”

No, that would be suicidal. But Will’s body has the answers his mind doesn’t, and he’s moving, sliding away from the glass and breaking the connection with a whole-body shudder, something like fire in his blood, something like battery acid. He stumbles away in the dark, heading for the entrance like Hannibal instructed. The cell doors are opening now—he can hear them swing—and he only has seconds, if anything.

“Run, Will!” Hannibal commands, and sounds as if he’s laughing. “Don’t let any of them ruin my work.”

He runs.


	2. Lockdown

**III.**

 

As he recovered in the hospital from his gutting, Will dreamt of setting the dining room table. He was in Hannibal’s house and the candles smelled like sage, used to disperse malevolent spirits from a household, and in cooking. The drapes were folded together so that no light could be let in through the windows. He knew where Hannibal kept the Japanese stoneware: ceramic plates fired by masters, lipped in pearled enamel, lovely little things. The kitchen was fragrant and sweet, and the scent burst over his tongue with every inhale, but Will couldn’t stop to savor this or any other distraction. There was dinner to serve.

He took the _coeur a la tripieres_ from the oven with his bare hands; the pot did not burn him. The wine released with the steam made his head heavy, but Will continued to remove the meat, thicken the gravy, and fish out the clinging strips of onion and bacon. He arranged the meat on two plates, artfully, with some grace Will had never mastered in reality. But in the dream, the lemongrass sprinkled in a perfect composition. The mashed potatoes resembled a flower in bloom. Even the sauce spread like a pool of blood, candied and bright.

In the dining room, he put the two plates in their settings, checking the forks and knives to ensure everything was in its place. Then he sat at the head of the table, picked up the fork, and lifted a sliver of his heart to his mouth.

“It’s very good,” said Hannibal, sitting at his right. “I had to cook it a long time to make the meat tender again.”

Will smiled at him. “It tastes better than you know,” he said.

(He woke alone and hungered.)

 

**VI.**

 

The orderly is still locked in the security station beside the lift, and he refuses to come out. Will bangs on the door a few times, but all he can hear is the orderly spitting abuse. “I’m not one of them!” he shouts, but there’s no time. The cells are open and the patients are swarming in the shadows behind him.

He leaves the man there, probably to die.

The lift’s ahead of him and Will desperately wants to avoid it. Stairs would be safer—the lift exit is what makes the basement floor so secure, constructed in the wake of Abel Gideon's fall down the cement steps, but surely there are stairs, some provision in case the lift isn’t working—because anything could be on the lift, anything could be waiting outside the doors when he gets out on the first floor. But if there are stairs, Will doesn’t know where they are, and he’s not about to play hide and seek with them. 

He can’t find the button for a moment. Panic crawls over him, and he can hear men behind him breaking their arms against the glass of the security station, the orderly screaming at them—

There. The button lights up red in the dark.

“Oh god,” says Will, covering it with his palm.

It’s too late. The doors open in front of him—he can hear the metal crawl back—but someone grabs Will’s arm. The patient smells like grease and sweat. _Peterson_ , catalogues Will, _Vic Peterson, he killed little freckled girls because he swore they loved him for it_. Stupidly, he thinks, _I don’t fit his profile._

Peterson crushes him against the lift’s opening, fingers scrambling for his mouth, like he’s going to reach inside and pull everything out through Will’s teeth. The tender scar on Will’s abdomen erupts in agony, but Will jabs his elbow down, hard, down into the soft pocket of his attacker’s collarbone. A furious shout—freedom. Will stumbles back into the lift and hears him follow, the doors close, the shouting behind them suddenly fall away into an edged silence broken only by the breathing of two desperate men. 

He punches the buttons on the lift—all the buttons, every single goddamn one of them he can, because one of them has to be the right one and it’ll open up first. Before he can finish, Peterson lunges at him again and grabs Will around the waist, ripping him up and away from the floor. A crack against the lift wall—pain flares. Will stabs out in the black and hopes he can find the soft jelly of eyes, ears, something decayed. He bites down, like Hannibal would have done, tasting the cotton of Peterson’s uniform and sweat and dirt. He fights like an animal because he _can’t die here_. He’s got to go to Louisiana again, fix boats on the gulf coast, feed his dogs.

And then the lift doors open behind him, and they’re falling, falling—

Will lands on top. It’s this simple saving grace that gives him the opportunity. In the sudden abundance of light, the long tiled hallway, the world made new again, he grasps Peterson’s head in between his hands.

He beats it against the floor.

The skull cracks, sickening, on the fourth impact. Will isn’t sure if his attacker is unconscious yet and the adrenaline makes the world tilt crazily, so he hits Peterson’s head on the tiles again. Blood splatters, red on white, a drain of syrup. His hands are painted. “I’m sorry,” he gasps. “I’m sorry.”

He drops Peterson and staggers up. _Move,_ he thinks tersely, _move move move move move._ The blood is slippery and he nearly trips getting up, smears the crap all the way down his knees, but Will keeps going, he moves.

The alarms continue to go off; they seem much closer now. The first-floor corridor is empty, but Will can hear bellowing in the lobby even if he can’t see anything until he turns the corner. It terrifies him. It’s the sound of people ripping into someone, wet and deep, and he thinks about how most serial killers are not so animalistic or indiscriminate, and wonders if Hannibal had been right: this may not be an escape but a mass murder, some messed up doctrine of revenge. His heart thunders. Some of these men will be docile, some of them criminal only by jury, but some of them will be brutal. Some of them won’t know any better.

If there’s death in the lobby, he’ll be too late to stop it. And he has no gun, no other weapon. Will hates himself, anyway.

The service stairs are by the lift, just like Hannibal said. He takes them.

The stairwell is empty, for now. The emergency exit is only one flight up, and Will pushes against it with his whole body. The door refuses to budge. He pries at the bolt with his fingers, but the red light on its metal casings is activated, and the door itself feels as if it’s been reinforced from the outside. Will curses and takes the stairs up another floor. He can see light piercing in from a window.

The window is barred shut. Emergency lockdown procedures. There’s no way out until the police arrive and open up the lobby doors with their private codes. Collapsing against the wall, Will slides down until he’s sitting on the cool tile, breathing hard, his shaking hands knotted inside his shirt as he tries to clean off the blood. 

“I’m stuck in here,” he says out loud, just to make it seem real. “Okay. I’m stuck in here.”

As he forces himself to calm, Will collects and considers his options. He thinks about what Hannibal said, about waiting for him in the hydrotherapy rooms. His spine grows cold, vertebrae pulling in tight. That’s not an option. Hannibal is a psychopath, manipulative because he has in-depth knowledge of behavioral science even if he can’t truly adhere to it. Whatever affection he feels for Will—and if Will lets himself believe there is any, for even a second, he has lost something important to his survival—it’s not nearly as strong as Hannibal’s desire to manufacture Will’s torment.

Hannibal might save Will from the monsters, but only because he believes that he deserves the _privilege_ of cutting Will open himself.

“It’s not going to be that way,” Will says, because it makes him feel better to hear it. He checks his pockets, but his cell phone was confiscated before going down to the basement level. He needs a weapon. Some way to communicate with the outside world. Preferably a hiding place where no one, not even Hannibal, especially Hannibal, can find him. A floor plan would be handy, but at this point Will has seen enough of this psychiatric fly trap to know the visiting center for the less dangerous patients will at least have a telephone.

Doors punch open on the stairwell a few floors above him. Will closes his eyes and tries not to make a sound, hoping the footsteps are going up instead of down. He listens. He tempers his pulse. He thinks, _It’s sometime after 11:30 a.m. I’m in Baltimore, Maryland. My name is Will Graham. I’m alive._

Reality condenses around him again, tangible and sun-sharpened. It reminds Will that Hannibal has not lied to him about all things.

 

**V.**

 

The euphoria of release pits the basement floor into a frenzy. Hannibal waits this period out, sitting on his mattress with his hands folded over his knees. His cell is one of the few with a remaining manual lock in addition to the electronic—all the better to limit everyone’s access unless on Dr. Chilton’s greedy watch. Normally, Hannibal finds the psychiatrist’s control issues amusing, his palpable need for recognition a childish game, but he can’t deny that at this moment Dr. Chilton’s actions are causing him considerable irritation.

Were it not for the lock, he could have joined Will immediately. However, all is not lost. With Will out of the picture and—judging from the patients’ curses by the lift—safely on his way out of the basement, Hannibal can take his time. This is an occasion of enjoyment, not to be ruined with the small details. He has particular plans for Kelts, who started the reviling habit of barking at Will during his visits, slobbering like a mongrel in heat.

Kelts believes that Will Graham is Hannibal’s dog. Hannibal has made this comparison himself to Will’s face. That does not mean others can aspire to the same level of intimacy. If there’s time enough, Hannibal will use his pencils to skewer Kelts’ eyes and pin them to his feet to better watch where he goes. In a better world, Hannibal would be able to exact a more encompassing punishment, flipping through his battered and beloved recipe box for a dish requiring a clumsy tongue, but the world is very much the flaw it has always been. Needs must, and Hannibal needs his silence more than he needs to exact his art.

The glass in the security station shatters. They must have finally found some way of breaking the barrier. Hannibal adjusts his sleeves as the orderly begs and howls and the patients goad his noises, telling him higher and lower as they please. 

Sooner or later, someone will remember Hannibal. Someone will let him out.

Surprising though the timing of Will’s visit may have been, fortune has a smile for Hannibal yet. He had planned to escape in a quiet, clean sweep, leaving the madhouse to its delights for the finer global market; some villa in Italy, perhaps, to indulge in academic scholarship, or an enticing small town in Denmark with need of a surgeon. But Will presents a singular prospect, made more brilliant for his inability to recognize its promise, and Hannibal will find him. When the farmer’s wife loses a diamond in the pen of pigs, she does not regret braving a modest amount of mud to obtain it.

Moreover, the press has been so certain that Hannibal is a demon. Freddie Lounds, in particular, had labeled him Heart-Eater. He sees no reason why he should not take this opportunity to divine for them a little more clarity.

 

**VI.**

 

When the service stairs are silent, Will gets to his feet and grips the railing as he takes the stairs two steps at a time. If his memory isn’t playing tricks on him again, the visiting rooms were on the second floor, next to the recreational room set aside for patients who were more or less harmless when watched. There were black telephones on the tabletops in one of those rooms, and direct lines to the outside world and authorities.

Maybe he’ll get lucky. Maybe everyone will be near the lobby or the staff lounge, like Hannibal said. At the same time, Will feels a bloated unease. He can too easily imagine the violent deaths when the patients overcome the orderlies and doctors, who may have been peacefully reading in the lounge, or perhaps up to the pursuits of the less peaceful designation (he remembers them, too, the men who spied, the men who took joy in inflicting dominance on the mentally ill). Could he save them? Could he even save one of them?

He thinks of Dr. Chilton, and how he could have missed something this monumental.

Is there anyone left to save? It can’t have been more than fifteen minutes since the alarms began, but Will has heard no cries for help, nothing but the patients and the defilement of the already dead. At least, he hopes that’s the case.

Hannibal knew this might happen. He said nothing to the personnel.

_I’m sure he’s worked up quite the appetite,_ Will thinks.

The second floor door is hanging open in the landing. Will creeps up behind it, slowing himself, readying his pulse. He listens and hears nothing in the hallway. When he slides around to the other side of the door so he can see into the long stretch of tiles, he blanches and presses himself deep into the corner of the landing, so that the metal bites into his back.

He heaves and counts to ten. Then he counts to fourteen. There is no point, because there isn’t a magic number that’s going to make what he sees okay.

The hallway is empty, but there’s a body strung up on the florescent light tubes, causing them to sag low. Will cautiously rings around it, avoiding the black congealment on the floor, the wrap of intestines like a crown. He reads the name on the identification card, but only because someone will need to know. He can be that someone if he lives.

The visiting center doors are open, the glass shattered across the floor. Will picks his way through the mess and enters the recreational room. The visiting rooms are cloistered to the side, doors shut, but his heart quickens and he heads toward them, feeling the proximity to something resembling sanity. If he could just let them know he’s here—if he could get some help on where to go, where was safe—

He hears the glass crinkle, right before something smashes into the back of his head.

Will drops to the floor. His heart, in staccato. Like the music Hannibal gutted him by. He drags himself forward, head bobbing, vision a blur. The footsteps follow, and then time leaves him somewhere he can’t be found.

 

**VII.**

 

Two nights before Will woke choking on Abigail Hobb's ear, a great low-lying fog covered the meadows surrounding his house in Wolf Trap. The fog was cinereal, promising winter with its cold bouquet. Despite the thick shroud, Hannibal managed to drive the winding, pockmarked road to Will’s house to have supper with him. It was a rare indulgence between friends, and a small part of Will imagined they would drink into the night and he would have to make up his couch for Hannibal. He couldn’t picture Hannibal sleeping, much less entombed by mounds of curious dogs, but it wasn’t an entirely unpleasant idea. Will even smiled when he saw the headlights cut through the fog, a sure sign that he wouldn’t spend the evening in solitude and cheap spirits.

Hannibal brought his own dishes to add to Will’s passable red beans and rice. He wore a long overcoat over his suit and paisley tie, and Will was struck by how different they would seem to the outside observer. But even so, Hannibal didn’t flinch at the dogs when they jumped on him. He didn’t think poorly of Will’s scuffed floors, threadbare furniture, and patched wool sweaters.

The thought was not unfamiliar, but now it nearly took Will’s voice away. He had to clear his throat more than once before greeting Hannibal at the door.

“A difficult drive,” Hannibal said, indicating the mist. “But then, you have said you enjoy nights such as these.”

“Ah, yes,” said Will. “My long lonely walks out across the field.”

“To see your house float on the sea,” agreed Hannibal. “Perhaps this comfort is one you can share once dinner is put away.”

At the time, Will laughed at him. They ate red beans and rice, and something that resembled Creole cuisine but was like nothing Will had ever eaten in New Orleans. It contained scraps of a yellowed cabbage that he picked out of his teeth hours later as they tromped across the scrappy underbrush of his acreage, swimming farther out into the fog, side by side there in the dark. Hannibal’s suit was of such a color that Will had trouble seeing his outline.

“There,” he said, stopping when at last his house seemed to hover in the nothingness, its sallow light a beacon in the stars. “There’s home. That’s what I told you about, that day in your office.”

Hannibal looked out across the expanse. He said nothing for a long time.

“Thank you,” said Will.

The walk back to Will’s house was long and silent. It was the closest Will had ever felt to any living person, and yet entirely different from exercising his pure empathy. His heart was dislodged, made separate from his being. And still it was body warm, all-seeing. He watched Hannibal unlock his car and get in behind the wheel, but although the miles began to stretch between them, Will knew they were the same. He slept on his side that night, not seeing the scuffed floors and mounds of dogs and condensation-wept windows, but instead seeing Hannibal gazing back at him, aware they were amalgamated, bridges woven out of supple living wood that grew into their moorings. When he closed his eyes, he could hear Hannibal breathing somewhere nearby, maybe strolling alongside the kitchen window as he guided Will’s house on its drifting journey across the gloaming.

Will did not dream that night. He sank into sleep like a child.

(When Hannibal tucked the knife under Will’s ribcage, he said, “I do not want you to feel pain in these moments, Will. Dream of Wolf Trap. I would rather you imagined yourself casting a line into the river, a long unraveling under a pale sun.”)


End file.
